The Movie: M. Night Shyamalan's Signs is a neat little departure from his two previous works, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable in that there isn't the big surprise twist ending in Signs -- well maybe that is the twist, since folks like me were kind of waiting around for it to happen haha.

Signs is kind of a mixed bag. The first half of the movie is quite successful at being really creepy and keeping the audience on their toes, building suspense in the way any good thriller would... but the ending of the movie seemed to fall apart, losing the suspense, and also throwing in some flashbacks and plot points that don't really seem to have a whole lot to do with the story.

So I guess what I'm saying is that on its alien-invasion-thriller level, it's pretty effective, but on the dramatic level of the story of a man losing his faith and finding it again... it really flops. That whole side of Mel Gibson's character is really just not very well developed and more like a cheap caricature and so while you are clearly able to sympathize with his physical plight, you're not really drawn into the story of his mental/spiritual situation.

In the end, I thought it was just OK. I really enjoyed the more "thriller" genre aspects of this film, and if you can somehow ignore the other stuff, it's not such a bad movie really.

The DVD: This DVD's generally excellent video transfer is nice and bright and clean, with great color, however it did have a very slight hint of "ringing" from a bit too much edge enhancement. The audio was fantastic, with great use of the surround channels that really draws you into the suspense of the film.

Special features are nowhere near as elaborate as those on the Unbreakable DVD release which had everything done in pristine, fully produced anamorphic widescreen; but we do get some deleted scenes and some story boards. And just like M. Night Shyamalan's other DVD releases, we get one of his old home movies he made when he was a kid -- this time a clip from his first alien film.